


Ticking Bomb

by rhodee



Series: Anti Team Cap (but mostly, just Anti Cap) [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author is Bitter, Civil War Team Iron Man, Dark Tony Stark, Gen, I'm Serious, Not Clint Friendly, Not Natasha Friendly, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Revenge, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Unreliable Narrator, Villain Tony Stark, bucky has an open ending, i'm very salty, it's a whole mood, kinda because i have a thing for evil tony, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24882184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodee/pseuds/rhodee
Summary: When Tony finally makes an appearance, it's not for the reason Steve had expected.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Series: Anti Team Cap (but mostly, just Anti Cap) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767649
Comments: 144
Kudos: 1405
Collections: In the Dark, Iron Man, Marvel, Salty Tony Stark, Team tony favs, Tony Stark deserves more, Works worth reading a million times over





	Ticking Bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Watched Civil War for the sake of being bitter all over again. 10/10 recommended because, three hours, and this fic became the result. :D
> 
> Again, this is _NOT_ Team Cap friendly.

Tony Stark was a force of nature. A man who never backed down from a challenge and never gave up control to a world too slow to keep up. Tony had a certain kind of charisma that Steve’s only seen in another man – a man Steve once had the honor of working with – and more than that, Tony had a way with words, almost _manipulative,_ to say the truth, that allowed him to bask in praise, in women, and money. He was a man who exceeded all odds, who cheated death one too many times and always, _always,_ had the world at his mercy. 

Steve never expected Siberia to go down the way it did – he should have, but he didn’t. It was pointless to expect Tony being civil, pointless to even assume that Tony would give Steve a chance to just sit down and _explain._ But when it came to a man like Tony Stark who always got what he wanted, heard what he wanted, and saw what he wanted, a rift in his perfect bubble was all that was needed for the situation to come crashing down. With the kind of deep pockets Tony has – that he’s _always_ had – every minor inconvenience was just as easy to rid with his money.

And for the first time, Tony was faced with a problem he couldn’t buy his way out of, and it made him lash out all too carelessly. 

When they returned to the States, Steve couldn’t help but be surprised at the general lack of… attention from the public. He knew their fight in Germany caused rumors and criticism rippling through the entire world. The dust had really settled, and for all intents and purposes, the world seems to have moved on. Their pardons promised safety and security, and immunity from being sued for damages – which was something Steve appreciated. They hadn’t left Laos or Leipzig/Halle airport in its peak condition, after all. 

He met most of the people he had dreaded meeting, Rhodes and Vision included. And while it was liberating to know that they didn’t hold much of a grudge like Steve had expected, there was an underlying tension in the conversation that became more and more difficult to shake off until it was just easier for Steve to steer clear of them. They seemed to respect that, even if they hadn’t said it out loud, their body language was evidence enough. 

Tony, on the other hand, makes no appearance. Certainly not when Steve was around. Answers to Steve’s questions on the whereabouts of Tony revolved around “Oh, you _just_ missed him.” and it didn’t take long for Steve to catch on to the message. Tony’s absence in meetings were excused because of his priority to Stark Industries, which was the most ridiculous reason, because anyone who knew Tony Stark knew that the man avoided meetings like the plague. 

So, maybe Tony wasn’t interested in putting the past behind them. And to an extent, Steve could excuse that. Tony didn’t seem to be a forgive-and-forget kind of guy. 

_Except_ it’s been three weeks since Steve’s been back, and three weeks still weren’t enough for Tony to put his ego aside and mend their crumbling relationship. Steve had given Tony more than enough time. He doesn’t want to make it harder for Tony to find him, but he’s also had enough spending every waking moment wondering when Tony would bury the hatchet. 

It had started with an offhand comment from Wanda, that amidst all the superhero business, she never got a chance to explore the country by herself. Which is why, after three weeks of being home and relishing in their return, they eventually decide to part ways.

Clint went back to his family, Scott back to his daughter, and Sam back to Washington. 

Steve, Bucky and Natasha were the last ones to remain, until a week passes and Natasha just doesn’t return one day. Steve had seen it coming, to be honest. Natasha was more of a lone wolf, and it was only a matter of time before she took her newfound freedom to her own advantage. It left Steve and Bucky going back to Brooklyn and using the city to reminisce about old times and lost years. 

He’s barely spent a day with Bucky when they stumble upon the televised news in a small cafe. 

═════════════

The body was found in a homestead, in the middle of a huge farm in Missouri and entirely isolated from civilization. They show an aerial view of the house, and it doesn’t even take a second for the blood to drain from Steve’s face at the sight of the all too familiar structure. The body was found twisted in the most literal sense, spinal cord severed and every single joint bent in all the wrong angles. There are signs of a wife and multiple children, from framed photos to toys scattered across the house, but it seemed like nobody else had been in the home for days, leaving the body to decompose for over a week. There are no documents to confirm John Doe’s identity, his face too deformed for facial recognition. The autopsy reveals that the first attack was aimed at the spinal cord, followed by a gunshot to the forehead, point-blank. 

_You better watch your back with this guy, chances are he's going to break it._

═════════════

The same afternoon, another body turns up. A couple of campers had stumbled upon an old, windowless shed a few miles from a beach in Maine. The walls that surrounded the shed had _Stark_ written in blood, pictured in all shapes and sizes with most of them distorted from dripping blood. Jane Doe was found lying in her blood in the middle of the shed, the skin of her face peeled off with fragments of skin under her fingernails. Autopsy soon revealed that she was alive for two days before succumbing to her injury, the cause of death believed to be from severe blood loss from a self-inflicted wound in her wrist. 

_We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us._

═════════════

By sunset, there’s a third body. Another Jane Doe. The body was found in a hotel room in Pennsylvania, stabbed multiple times in the back, her face burnt beyond recognition. They find passports – _plural –_ in her belongings, faces scratched out but each of them belonging to a different name – Natalie Rushman, Natalia Romanova and Laura Matthers among others. The murder weapons are still embedded in her body – twelve knives – each with fingerprints that date back to deceased people from the 1900s. 

_I'm not the one that needs to watch their back_

═════════════

Steve had been fixated on the television for the past hour, eyes glazing over the images on screen as he struggled to come to terms with the news. One blow after another, and another, and it felt like the world was playing some kind of twisted, cruel prank on him. He just saw them _a week ago,_ and Natasha, _barely a day._

Wanda’s death only confirmed his theory that someone was sending a message, that it wasn’t just a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario like he had _desperately_ hoped when he’d heard about Clint. Natasha’s death made him fear the whereabouts of Sam and Scott. 

It had been more than an hour since the media broadcasted the gruesome murder of Jane Doe inside a hotel room, an hour of Steve just standing _blank_ in front of a television too old to be put on display in an appliance store. The reporter starts to recount the details for the _n_ th time when a voice tears him away from his thoughts. 

"You know, it really puts the word backstabbing in perspective," Tony says, standing beside Steve like he’d been there the entire time. The first thing that Steve thinks is that _Tony’s here,_ that _Tony’s_ taken the first step to reconciliation, when Tony’s words register, and hope dissipates into anger. Three of Tony’s teammates were reported dead in under a _day,_ people that Tony had worked with, people that were his _family_ , and Tony takes it as an opportunity to deliver an ignorant one-liner. Steve feels his blood boil, rage washing over him in magnitudes. 

"How could you even say that?” Steve says through gritted teeth. He turns to face Tony, whose hands are clasped behind his back and watching the news channel with minimal curiosity. There’s a hint of a smile playing on his lips, in that he was either proud of his opening line or that Natasha’s death was something amusing. Steve doesn’t even know which one makes him angrier. “Do you have no respect for the dead?" 

"Funny you should say that,” Tony points out, and then finally turns to Steve. The smile had wiped off of his face, replaced by an expression Steve couldn’t decipher. There are times when Tony’s face is a book of emotions, but there are also times when it’s nothing but a blank canvas. Unfortunately for Steve, this time it’s a blank canvas and it stirs a form of uneasiness inside him. “Last I remember, you didn't have respect for two certain deaths either." 

_Of course,_ because _everything_ was about Tony Stark and his life of grief. 

"You're unbelievable.” The words come out of Steve like venom, but it doesn’t even impact Tony in the way he’d hoped. Tony just blinks at him, looking slightly bemused. “Natasha’s dead. Clint, Wanda, maybe even Sam and Scott – they're _dead_. And somehow, you circle this back to you?" 

There’s an odd moment of unwavering eye-contact before Tony breaks into a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Like an old man once said, and I’m just paraphrasing here, doesn’t everything?” Tony unclasps his hands from behind him, bringing them up to articulate his words as he continued speaking. “My business partner dealt weapons under the table, and it circled back to me. He died, I _nearly_ died, but what’s life without a few ups and downs?”

He pauses to look at Steve, searching for some kind of a response, but before Steve can even get a word out, Tony suddenly looks away, as if out of a trance, and continues to speak. “ _Then_ , the Witch screwed with my head and mind warped me to create Ultron, and it became my fault.” He puts his palms up in mock surrender. “Fine, my bad. _But,_ Ultron died so, there’s that. And after Sokovia – which was also my fault, somehow? – the Accords were brought up and certain disagreements took place, _bam —_ blame circles right back to me.” Tony turns to Steve and cocks his head to the side. “That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? When you implied I tore the Avengers apart?” 

Steve doesn’t respond, instead continues to level Tony with a disapproving glare. Tony hums at Steve’s lack of verbal response, apparently pleased, and Steve would like to do _anything_ to wipe that smug grin off of Tony’s face. Tony’s behavior just feels like he’s taking his own sweet time to warm up and dance on the graves of his dead teammates.

Natasha’s censored body flashes on screen again, and Steve spots the flicker of expression in Tony’s face. Like a man admiring his craft – proud and satisfied.

It catches Steve by surprise, because as much as Tony Stark makes his skin crawl, Steve knew the man hated being responsible for death. He’s constantly emphasized it to be the reason that he gave up weapon manufacturing, and Sokovia’s death count had taken a huge toll on Tony. 

And yet, the man looks amused, if not, _pleased_ looking at the knives penetrating Natasha’s back. Tony’s expression causes a kind of dread to creep up on Steve, slowly but surely in a promise to be feared. Like there’s suddenly something more to Tony being here, after almost a month of radio silence, on the day three of their teammates are found dead.

Three of whom had betrayed Tony, one way or another. 

Tony sighs. It’s exaggerated just for the sake of wanting to catch Steve’s attention. “I mean, this was the closest I could get to tearing them apart,” Tony says easily, like he hadn’t just confirmed the exact thing Steve started to fear. 

“Tony,” Steve starts. Stops, and inhales sharply. “Tony, did you kill them?” The answer would be either a yes or a no – it can’t get any more direct than this. It’s either Steve accusing Tony of murder, or Tony Stark admitting to murder. And Steve can’t decide on what he’d want the answer to be. 

“What, it wasn’t obvious from my killer monologue?” Tony asks, like it's a _joke_ , and all the blood drains from Steve’s face. Fear ascends in him like never before, and Steve no longer recognizes the man standing in front of him. Tony continues, blissfully unaware of the horror in Steve’s face. “Needless to say, I _am_ known for exceeding expectations.” 

_He killed them. Tony killed Clint. He killed Wanda, and he killed Natasha. And he feels not even a hint of remorse._

Steve feels like he’s walking on a minefield, and he has to be very _very_ careful moving forward. There’s no doubt that Tony knows Bucky’s with Steve. He doesn’t want to think what Tony would do to Bucky if he found him, and desperately hopes that Bucky hasn’t left their motel room. Bucky had been sleeping when Steve left to get them dinner, and Steve hopes that his stars are aligned enough that Bucky doesn’t wake up and come looking for Steve. 

“Tony, why did you— they didn’t do anything to you,” Steve says, struggling, _hoping,_ that he was reaching out to at least some part of the man that was the Tony he once knew. 

“My mom didn’t do anything to the Winter Soldier. Wanna hear how that turned out?” 

“That’s different. Bucky was—” Steve stops himself before he can say _innocent._ There’s no doubt it would only rile Tony up even more. “Bucky was under HYDRA’s control. He didn’t have a _choice._ ”

“Maybe so,” Tony hums, and Steve thinks he’s said the right thing to reach out to Tony. That maybe this time, Tony understood where Steve was coming from, what Steve had been trying to explain from the start. “But I didn’t get where I am by letting my allies walk all over me, only for them to get away from the consequences.” 

“Tony, please. Stop this before you do something you regret.” 

“Regret?” Tony repeats. He shakes his head, laughing. “No. You know, the thing about vengeance is that you never feel regret after. Your actions are justified.” He stops to shrug. “Personally, anyway. And _damn_ did it feel good choking the life out of the man who did the same to my mom.” 

_Oh god._

_Not Bucky. Please. Not Bucky._

“Tony— Please. _Please_ tell me you didn’t—” Steve can barely get the rest of the words out. Tony had _killed_ Bucky - left his body to rot in a motel room - before making his way to Steve. Bucky's murderer - _his best friends murderer_ \- is standing before him, not feeling guilt in the slightest. He's talking to Steve with the casual air of someone talking about the _weather_. 

“Put up a good fight, that one,” Tony sounds almost impressed. Steve could kill him then and there, but he’s realized by now this was Tony’s intention all along. Like a cat toying with its prey – steering its victim to certain death, but not before making it fear for its life. Tony smiles, almost manic. “But really, it’s _crazy_ how anger motivates someone. Remember what you felt when you nearly killed me in Siberia? That. _That_ is crazy.” And intending to rub salt on the wound, Tony adds, “But the difference between you and me, is that I went through with it.” 

It was a confirmation that Steve didn’t need, because it was a confirmation he’d _feared._ Tony had admitted to being driven by anger, that Clint, Wanda, Natasha and Bucky were victims of Tony Stark's rage. It only makes sense that Steve is next. 

“This is not you, Tony. I _know_ you,” Steve says. _Pleads._ He knows Tony enough to know that the man always had tricks under his sleeve, and that when Tony set his mind on something - there was no shaking the man. “Whatever you think you have to do, you don’t. This is not _you.”_

Tony shakes his head, like Steve was a child who’d just said something that resembled an offense. He tsk-tsks before speaking. “I’ve been me all along, Steve. Some call me Tony, and others–” He shoots Steve a pointed look, like Steve was a part of the _others._ “ —the others who fear me, that is, call me the Merchant of Death.” 

**Author's Note:**

> 👀👀👀👀


End file.
